Synaesthesia vs Semantics in the Visual Communication Of Food. The Encounter of Practice and New Ways of Thinking for Social Benefits

The present paper investigates the verbal and visual representation of food, exploring relevant typographic, graphic, and photographic techniques and taking into account their levels of iconicity/abstraction in relation to the synesthetic capacity of the visual representation. Starting from practice experimentation, namely the analysis of the works created in basic design classes held by the authors at the undergraduate course in Communication Design at Politecnico di Milano, the present research develops a theory that reverses – in the specific case of food representation – the high-abstraction = synaesthesia equation that has traditionally characterised synesthetic practices – artistic and non-artistic alike. The project’s results give rise to a new awareness of the applications and ways of representing food in communication design, with special focus on social campaigns targeting groups of subjects with Eating Disorders (ED), also showing the Virtuous Circle that is triggered in the relationship between practice experimentation and theoretical reflection for the creation of new ways of thinking and methods.